


Champions

by Ephialtes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Narnia-esque, POV First Person, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 12:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6051519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ephialtes/pseuds/Ephialtes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In stories, children are torn from their lives through magical portals all the time. Some of them get to go back. What happens then?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Champions

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://kaberett.tumblr.com/post/139486156000) tumblr post.

I was fifteen when the Land called me. A champion, summoned across existence to fight an invader from another world. I was thirty-five when, peace restored, it carelessly discarded me back to the point I left. Twenty years of memories, shoved into a body and mind too small for them.

When I woke my parents in the middle of the night, screaming and crying about the unfairness of it all, they thought I'd had a psychotic break. The next few years were therapist after therapist, medication after mediation, all trying to convince me that the life I'd left was a dream, a hallucination, nothing more than my mind playing tricks on me. They showed me journal articles of other children who had similar 'episodes' and how they had been cured.

I almost convinced myself they were telling the truth except… There are marks left on those who are torn through the black void between worlds. A sixth sense of the otherworldly that never quite leaves you. I clung to it as my own secret proof, even as I floated through the rest of my teenage years on a cocktail of drugs.

I dropped out of school, didn't make college. Couldn't find a job. The first time I was rejected for 'lack of experience' I wanted to scream. I forged alliances with the dragons of the High Mountains! I led armies into battle against the darkest of foes! I ruled a kingdom, I was pretty sure I could handle managing a call centre.

Eventually I found myself in a minimum-wage, dead-end job that would keep me alive. Gave me a routine, at least.

As I got older I went looking for the others. The ones who had been 'cured'. I surely couldn't have been the only one. After the third door was closed in my face I gave up trying to talk to the ones who'd made it out, started looking between the cracks. Some had been driven insane by the treatments given to them by well-meaning professionals who couldn't comprehend that there was something more. Some were dead, and a few had gone missing. Dropped off the grid, never seen again, that sort of thing. I hoped they were happy, wherever they were.

Life continued, as it does, until one night when I felt something familiar. Close. The magic in my blood buzzed, pulling me away. I left my apartment without a thought, letting my senses guide me to an alley. To a door, hidden in a corner. I reached out, grasped the handle and pushed. Immediately I could feel the Land, there, just behind the door. It didn't want me back. It fought me, but I pushed again, harder. Years of concentrated rage fuelled me as I broke down its defences and stepped through the portal.  
I felt it immediately, how my body came to life, the fire within rushing to the surface. I laughed for the first time in years, free of the tattered shell that I had been living in for a decade. I was home. I would rule again.

  


And on the other side of the Earth, a new story started.

I was fourteen when the Land called me. A champion, summoned across existence to fight an invader from another world…


End file.
